PRELIMINARIES: None of this belongs to me. Final Fantasy VI, and all worlds, characters, etc. associated with it are the property of Square. Square is not affiliated in any way, shape, or form with the creation of this story (a fact for which, I suspect, they would be profoundly grateful). I have made liberal usage of their characters and settings in this story; this was done without their knowledge or permission, and is technically an infringement of Square's copyright. As this story is, at the most pragmatic level, free promotion of the Final Fantasy franchise, it is hoped that they will regard this story (if at all) with a benign ignorance.

If you paid a wooden nickel for this story, not only have you been drastically overcharged, but whoever charged you has done so illegally, and I disavow any association with said individual(s).

Don't copy this story onto your archive. In the first place, if you want to it probably means that you were high on something when you read it; in the second place, it's an "in-progress" work; in the third place, I want to keep a very tight leash on its distribution. E-mail me if you simply must have this story, but do not anticipate my response and post it before I get back to you.

All feedback is welcome, up to an including line-by-line critiques (provided they fit in my mailbox).

Now, sit back and either enjoy the ride, or (more likely) enjoy thinking of what you'll do to me at the end of it...

The Author

Shadow...

What kind of a name is that, anyway?

Shadow.

Who are you?

Shadow!

What do you mean, "It's not time--"

"SHADOW!!!"

Say what you will, under different circumstances. A woman screaming your name makes an effective alarm clock.

I don't usually get up of my own volition before the sun rises, though; so when I opened my eyes to a darkened room, I knew something was wrong.

To my great chagrin, I had an excellent idea what that something was.

Splitting headache: Check.

Vibrating teeth: Check.

Shredded throat: Check.

Sweat-drenched sheets: Check.

Terra holding me down as if I were possessed: Check.

"Not again."

Groan in disgust: Check.

Terra released me when she heard my voice, and I sat up, rubbing my head where it must have banged against the wall. "How do you feel?" she asked.

Five screaming nightmares in five nights. That, I thought, entitled me to reply, "As usual." That is to say, I felt like crap, and knew I would not be able to go back to sleep for the rest of the night. Not because I couldn't close my eyes without being assaulted by a dozen screaming spawns of Setzer--I didn't even remember the dreams--but because my body had tensed up, and would refuse to relax sufficiently to return to my slumber.

I pushed back the covers, swung my feet over the side of the bed, and pulled on my robe. Even though it was already warm in the room, I welcomed the extra weight; it was the one article of clothing I'd flat-out insisted that Terra buy.

I stood, and padded over to the window. The boards creaked behind me; a moment later, I felt a nudge at my elbow and slid aside to make room for Terra. We stood there at the window in silence, watching the night sky.

I never tired of watching the stars, or the moon, or the ocean. It was both soothing and exhilarating; and if it didn't help me sleep, at least it made me feel better.

And speaking of which...

I glanced up at the moon, and mentally calculated its position in the sky. The night was about half-over. Which meant that I had about five hours to kill before dawn.

"Terrific," I muttered.

"Shadow?"

I jumped. I'd forgotten that Terra was there. "Sorry."

"No need." There was a pause; then, Terra laid a hand on my shoulder. "We'll beat this, Shadow. I promise you."

"I hope so." I sighed and turned back to my bed. I couldn't sleep, but I should at least rest my eyes. "I can't take much more of this."

Terra's back was turned, and her voice was soft as I rustled the covers; I probably wasn't supposed to hear her response.

"Neither can I."

Mornings, of late, had been exercises in sheer frustration; today promised to be no different. It began--well, technically, it began when I woke up. But I stopped pretending I might fall asleep again with the coming of the dawn.

I sat up, slipped on my robe, and hobbled out of the room.

Now, for the most part, I obeyed Celes' mandate to stay in bed. However, when it was discovered that I'd regained the strength to navigate the second floor of the inn, we ("we" being Terra and myself) agreed to an exception, for the sake of my comfort, if not Terra's sanity--a morning trip to the baths.

The inn had two baths on the second floor--one for men, and one for women, though which was which depended on who got there first, and was liable to change at any given hour. Each had a paper curtain that, when drawn, could divide the room; however, I'd never seen them both used, because that was around the time the nightmares started, and few people bathed at dawn. None, actually--except me. In fact, I'd even beaten the hot water to the baths once or twice.

So I was surprised to find that this morning, someone had beaten me. The curtain was drawn across one of the baths. "Hello?" Who was up this early?

"Shadow?" It was Terra.

"Good morning." I pulled the second curtain into place behind me, noting the narrow "hallway" the two barriers formed, and slipped into the men's bath. I was pleased to see that if I was a little slower than usual, so were the servants--the water was still just a notch below scalding, which did wonders for my aching muscles.

I couldn't let myself get too relaxed, though. I'd found out the hard way a couple of days before that taking a nap could have...unpleasant consequences. I had to stay awake.

And speaking of which--"What are you doing up so early?"

"I...I couldn't sleep."

Uh-oh. One of us on the verge of collapse was bad enough. "Why?"

"I--I just couldn't...I couldn't get them out of my head..."

"Terra?"

"I couldn't forget your screams."

You just had to ask, didn't you? I sank a little lower in the water. Terra continued after a moment. "The pain I heard--what happened to you, Shadow?"

"How do you mean?"

"I've seen you sleep before...before Kefka...you were never like this. But every night--since you woke up, not just this past week--you've had nightmares."

"How would you know--" Wait a sec. "You've been watching me sleep."

"We took shifts before the others left...but yes, I have."

I'm sorry. So there was someone in my room. But who? What were they apologizing for? And... "Why?"

"I'm worried about you, Shadow. This isn't good for you."

No kidding. "What do you think it is?"

"I don't know...maybe you had these nightmares before Kefka's death."

What? "But how? You just said--"

"You had a great deal of self-control, Shadow, and it was deeply ingrained. You might have known a way not to show it when you were asleep."

"But I would have forgotten it along with everything else?"

"You might have. Something like that would have been at an unconscious level by now, but you were all but dead when we found you. If that's the case, at least we have someplace to start from."

"You'll forgive me if I don't dance for joy at the thought of dealing with these things for the rest of my life."

"It's better than the alternative."

"Which is?"

Silence.

"Terra?"

"...It could be your memories."

"My memories? What do you--you mean my memories could be causing the nightmares?!"

"Yes."

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse! Terra was right to tell me not to force my memories--if they were behind the nightmares, remembering could drive me insane.

Bad things, indeed.

There was a loud splash, then I heard the other curtain being pulled aside. "Shadow, I'm going to bring some soup to your room."

"All right." Then, as the thought occurred to me, "Terra, how long have you suspected my memories are behind those dreams?"

The door paused in mid-creak. "A while, Shadow," Terra said. "A while."

Click.

"Wonderful." I sat back in the bath and growled. This was not shaping up to be a good day. "What do I do now?"

I didn't expect an answer.

I wasn't disappointed.

"What kind of fighter was I?"

I didn't mean to ask. The question was one of a hundred that tumbled about in my mind as I poked at my cold lunch and fervently hoped the doctor would approve solid food this afternoon. It just happened to be the one that popped out.

Terra raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

That was just a little too quick to be unrehearsed. "You know what I mean. If I helped take out Kefka, I must have been a powerful warrior."

"Not necessarily. Does 'Relm' ring any bells?" At my negative, "She was one of the others that broke into Kefka's tower. In fact, she was one of our most powerful members." A pause. "She's thirteen."

"Thirteen?!" My bowl fell from my hands with a loud clatter, sending the cold broth cascading across the floorboards. While I hacked around the soup in my lungs, Terra grabbed a napkin and stooped to attack the mess on the floor.

After a moment, I moved to help, but she stopped me with an upraised hand. "I can handle this, and you need to save your strength."

Save my strength...

Strength...

...!

I sat back on the bed, and contemplated the birth of an idea.

Terra spoke up from the floor. "I'm surprised you didn't recognize Relm's name. She took Interceptor home with her when you...went under."

I felt my hackles rise. "Interceptor?"

"You don't remember him, either?"

The name seemed familiar, certainly, but... "Should I?"

"Er...let's just say you were a lot closer to him than I'll ever be. He really doesn't like me." Terra took a final swipe with the napkin and dropped it in the bowl. "You'll see him again soon enough. Locke and Celes are sure to have picked him up."

I shook my head. "We're getting off-topic here. How did a teenager help take down a god?"

She sat back in her chair and gave me an enigmatic smile. "Magic."

I watched her skeptically, looking for some hint of a joke. There was none. Oh...kay. "And was I dangerous, too, because of this 'magic'?" That probably came off just a bit more sarcastic than I intended it.

Terra didn't react to it, if she noticed it. Of course, she didn't answer my question, either. "Why are you so interested in what kind of a fighter you were, anyway?"

I hadn't been, when I asked. "I thought that the disciplines that let me control those dreams might be tied into any training I might have had."

Terra grasped my implied suggestion almost immediately. "Oh, no. No way, Shadow. I'm not teaching you to fight again."

"I doubt you could, if I specialized in a weapon like the Striker. But I think at least some of the forms are still there--if I can push myself, and rebuild my stamina..."

"No!" Terra slammed her hand against the wall. She took a breath, then went on. "Shadow, anything else I'll be more than happy to help you with. But don't ask. Not for this."

"If you have a better idea, I'd love to hear it. I'm running out of time." I'd almost collapsed on my way back from the baths.

"Anything's better than that!" She threw up her hands. "You're getting ahead of yourself. You don't even know if the doctor will let you out of bed, let alone what he'll think of your idea."

"We'll see what he has to say, then."

"Fine."

It wasn't until after she left that I realized Terra still hadn't answered my question.

My doctor didn't have a problem with answering my questions.

I could never get control of a conversation long enough to ask him one.

He was a strange little man, a wrinkled old dwarf with no hair to speak of, save for two slate-colored tufts that sprang up defiantly behind his ears. He was anything but frail, though; his eyes almost literally glowed with energy, and his tiny frame was well nigh indestructible. He didn't walk from place to place; he bounced.

None of this explained how he managed to enter my room through the second-story window.

On the other hand, did I really want to know?

He was consistent, if nothing else. The sun had barely begun its slow metamorphosis from yellow to red and stretched out to touch the stool when his silhouette popped into existence on the windowsill, blotting out the sunlight. He balanced there for a moment, chest thrust out and hands on his hips, then pulled his pipe from between his teeth and rapped sharply against the wall.

"Knock, knock?"

I sat back against the wall, crossed my arms, and glared.

He cackled as he hopped down to the floor and bounded across the room to my bed. "So, my boy, how are you feeling?"

"I'm still having those nightmares." The doctor checked up on me every other day; he'd been rather perturbed on his last visit to learn that the dreams that robbed me of my sleep were persisting.

Now, he frowned. "That's not good, boy. Not good at all." He gestured imperiously with his pipe. I sighed, then pushed back the covers and clambered to my feet, leaning heavily against the wall. He hopped onto the bed and began poking and prodding my chest.

"Doctor, about my nightm--oof!"

He looked up as he removed the pipe from my solar plexus. "You have a theory?"

"Terra...Terra said..." I put my hands on my knees and took a deep breath. "She said my memories might be behind them."

"She did, did she?" He rubbed his chin. "Hmm...if that were the case, then..." Before I could blink, he was down by my ankles; then, I was face-down across the bed, and he was on my back, hands rifling from point to point, never staying in one place longer than a few seconds. "So tell me, my boy," he said as he worked, "where is that ravishing nurse of yours, anyway?"

"Shopping." I smiled into the mattress. Terra's first and, if she had anything to say about it, only encounter with my doctor began with a wolf-whistle, consisted of a series of slaps (on her part) and increasingly outrageous propositions (on his), and was capped off when he dared lay a hand on her hip. Terra reacted to this with a display that left little doubt that she could very well have taken down a god (possibly by herself); since then, she'd made a point of being out when he was in.

"Pity." He sighed. "I was--what in the..." His hands froze over the base of my neck. "Now this is--three?!" One hand trailed down my spine, while the other pressed firmly on my right shoulder blade. "Well I'll be damned..."

"Doctor, what--"

"Quiet, boy, I'm not finished yet." A few seconds passed; then, the doctor hopped down to the floor in front of me. He took my chin in one hand. "Look me straight in the eyes, and tell me the instant you feel any pain." He brought the other hand to rest lightly on my temple, and pressed.

He did not press any harder than he did at first. "Why would I feel pain? Doctor, what's--"

-FLASH-

"--look out!"

I stumbled to the side, struggling to keep my balance as I ran. A crossbow bolt shot through the space where my head had been, and I glared at my companion across its wake. "You just had to gloat, didn't you?" I hopped over a log. "Couldn't leave well enough alone. A clean getaway's enough for anyone else, but not for you! Oh, no!" I gripped the neck of my sack a little tighter, entertaining a brief fantasy of doing the same with his neck. "No, you have to rub it in their faces, so now we've got a dozen Domani on our trail! Brilliant, Baram, just--"

"Will you...shut up...and run already!" Baram was not in good shape. His run was closer to a stagger than a sprint; his hair was splattered across his face, and he held his side in pain with one hand while he dragged his sack behind him with the other.

He stumbled and went to his knees just as another bolt whizzed overhead. "Damn!" He clambered to his feet, only to fall against a nearby tree, gasping for breath.

I cursed. "Quick! Off the road!"

We plunged into the brush, dodging branches left and right. I spotted a small incline behind a log, and pointed it out to Baram. He pointed back the way we came, and I nodded.

We laid flat against the incline--Baram facing the way we came to watch for the soldiers, me facing forward to watch for...well, anything else.

Not that we stand much of a chance either way. "Baram, how many knives have you got left?"

"Five, I think. You?"

"Three."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

The next few moments passed in silence; then, some leaves rustled nearby. I froze. Nearly a full minute went by before a rabbit hopped out of the bushes and I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. "Baram, remind me again why we hit a train going through the Phantom Forest?"

"Element of surprise. Only a complete idiot would try it."

"And that makes us...?"

"It was your idea."

"Oh. Yeah."

Another five minutes passed in silence.

Then ten.

Then fifteen.

Then twenty.

Finally, Baram spoke. "It's too quiet."

"Do you think they missed us?"

"With all the noise we were making?" He snorted. "Besides, a blind man could spot our entry point."

"So what are they waiting for?"

"Good question." He began to climb over the log. "I'm going to check it out."

"You sure you're up to it? I can go, if you're--"

"I'm fine. Besides, I've got more knives." That wouldn't make a difference either way, and we both knew it, but I let it pass. He turned back to look at me. "You know the drill."

"Asthmatic chocobo means 'Run.' Gotcha." I grinned at his glare. "I'll be waiting."

I didn't have to wait long. Barely two minutes passed before I heard the "all clear"--a blackbird, high-low-high. That worried me, because it should have taken longer to secure the road. Thoughts of betrayal ran briefly through my mind, but were dismissed just as quickly; train robbers would receive no mercy under the crown, and Baram knew that.

I tripped over the soldier's corpse and fell flat on my face just as I reached the path.

Baram's laughter washed over me as I scrambled to my feet, spitting out dirt and cursing, but it was only a shadow of its usual self. His face was pale, and as I caught a glimpse of the bodies scattered across the road, I understood why.

It was ugly. There was blood everywhere, and great gaping holes had been dug out of flesh and armor alike. The soldier I stumbled over had managed to get his sword out of its scabbard, and rigor mortis kept it firmly in his grasp, even when the forearm had been torn off at the elbow. His dead eyes were wide with terror, and his mouth was open in a silent scream.

I looked up at Baram. "How could we not have heard this?"

"Look at the wounds."

I turned back to the corpse. "What do the wounds have to do with--oh shit. Baram, please tell me these aren't what I think they are."

He nodded grimly. "Tooth marks."

The entire Doman squadron had been eaten alive. And we hadn't heard a single thing, barely fifty feet away.

Quiet. Too quiet.

"Ghosts." I spat on the ground. "I hate ghosts."

"Let's not stick around, then."

"I can't argue with that. Is there anything salvageable on these guys?"

"Want a sword?"

"Couldn't hurt--I'm almost out of knives." I pried the hilt of my man's sword out of his grip, ignoring the snapping sound his fingers made, and took an experimental swipe. It was longer than it needed to be, but the balance was still good. "Are the crossbows intact?"

Silence.

"Baram?"

I turned around. Baram had his back to a tree, with a ghost in his face and its hand around his throat.

-FLASH-

"Gaaah!" I jerked back from the doctor's grip and gasped. "What the hell was that?!"

The doctor merely raised an eyebrow. "Did it hurt?"

"Did it hurt?" I spluttered. "Did it hurt?! I just saw--"

"Answer the question, boy. Did it hurt?"

"Of course it--huh?" There was pain...wasn't there? I know I felt something...

He crossed his arms and smirked. "So, saw something, did you boy? Not surprising, all things considered. What do you recall?"

"I was in a forest." I frowned. "There was a man with me. His name was...Bart? Barak? No..." I closed my eyes and leaned forward to rest my forehead on my fingertips. "We were...chasing? No, being chased...ergh..." I gritted my teeth.

The right hook came out of nowhere.

"Idiot!" The doctor scowled at me as I looked up from the floor in a daze. "I asked for what you recalled, not what you could strain out of your subconscious!"

"Huh?"

He shook his head. "Get back on the bed." He bopped me lightly on the forehead as I did so. "I was going to try some dampening techniques, but if you reacted that poorly to a benign memory--"

"Doctor." I pitched my voice flat in an effort to keep the irritation out of my voice.

He sighed. "Basically, my boy, your lovely little caretaker is mostly right."

"Mostly?"

"Your nightmares are being caused by a number of severe traumatic experiences. Three of them, to be exact. Normally, they would be buried, so to speak, in your subconscious; but your mind is a real mess right now, so when the conscious shuts down, those memories float to the top."

"Great."

"It is, isn't it?" He sighed again. "I was going to try and put some sort of buffer around those three memories, but I don't think that's such a good idea now."

"Why not?"

"Because you'd have to see each of those memories the way you just saw that last one, and that was a benign memory--not one of the really bad ones."

That was a memory? I closed my eyes, and a badly mutilated corpse filled my sight. They snapped open as I swallowed down a bout of nausea. "I don't know that I'd call that memory benign, doctor."

He waved his pipe dismissively. "It's relative. But that leaves you in a bit of a quandary, boy." My stomach sank as he jabbed at my chest. "I played around a bit with your body's networks so that your excess energy will go to rebuilding those mental defenses. Even so, the nightmares are going to keep going for another week, at least."

"Another week?! I'm never going to last that long the way I'm going!"

"Now, now, we're going to do something about that, too. But first, tell me--do you wake up from these nightmares on your own?"

"No, Terra wakes me up."

"She does, does she?" He raised an eyebrow. "And just how does she do that?"

I frowned. What was he getting at? "I tend to thrash around a lot during those dreams, so she has to physically restrain me." Something about the look in his eyes... "She holds me down on the bed while she keeps screaming...my...name..." Wait a second.

He put a finger to his chin and grinned widely. "Go on, go on, it's just getting good!"

I flushed beet-red. "It's not like that!"

"Oh it isn't, is it?" He laughed at my disgusted expression, and lightly tapped my head. "Come on, boy! You've got a goddess like that waiting on you hand and foot, and you haven't even considered it?! Yes, I know," he continued, holding up a hand to forestall my objection, "look what he did to the poor doctor! But think about it, boy--why else would she have stayed behind to take care of you when all her friends went away?"

"She used to have amnesia too--that's why she stayed."

"So she says." I fixed him with a level glare, and he threw up his hands. "All right, all right, I give up! Let her go away heartbroken and desolate. Rejected, desperate for human comfort, she'll have no choice but to seek consolation on the lap of the friendly neighborhood doctor--" He broke off at my chuckle and gave me a hurt look.

"I'm sorry, doctor, just the image of that--that--"

"I'm glad you find it so amusing, boy." The levity abruptly fled his tone. "Your lovely nurse is cutting your recovery off at the knees; I thought you should get something recuperative out of the whole deal!"

That killed the laughter almost immediately. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, boy, that your body's reactions to the dreams are something akin to sleepwalking, and the worst possible thing she could do is wake you up in the middle of it! The first thing we're going to do is let you sleep through the night. NO WAKEUP CALLS. You may feel bad in the morning, but at least it'll be morning, and you should be awake."

I grimaced. "Tell that to the innkeeper." He'd let me know in no uncertain terms yesterday that he was sick and tired of hearing complaints from his other tenants about my midnight screeching. "He's close enough to kicking us out as it is."

"I'll handle the innkeeper. You just worry about yourself." He cackled, and patted me on the shoulder. "Chin up, boy! Things are going to work out, so don't sit there looking like a rhinox! Smile a little!"

With no little hesitation, I managed a weak grin. "If you say so, doctor."

"I do say so, boy. And now, let's move on to happier subjects."

"Such as?"

"Solid food."

There was nothing weak or hesitant about my smile this time.

Neither of us was wholly pleased with the final verdict. True to his word, the doctor had browbeaten the innkeeper into accepting that his boarders would have trouble sleeping for a while longer. And then, true to form, he had vanished into thin air, leaving the innkeeper to inform Terra of her role in my problem--a spectacle that could be heard throughout the inn and had the servants buzzing for days afterward. Details were sketchy, but from what I could gather, the innkeeper did considerably more than "inform," and Terra did not take it at all kindly.

Thus, she was not in the best of moods when she discovered that I had brought up the question of exercise near the end of the examination, and that the doctor had casually issued me a virtual carte blanche. Terra nearly had apoplexy when she heard that; she stormed out of the inn and spent the next two hours hunting him down (an irony which, I gather, amused him greatly--at first, anyway). I don't know what exactly she said while dragging him back to the inn, but he entered my room--through the door--wearing a severely chastened expression. He summarily limited the exercise he would permit to brisk walking--which, considering my long legs, was tantamount to rescinding it altogether--then dove out the window before I could protest.

Nonetheless, there were certainly things to be happy about. The doctor ended my mandatory bedrest and okayed me for solid foods, both of which called for a celebration. Thus it was that we found ourselves sharing a meal of breaded fish and some sort of fruit juice in the common room that evening.

The common room was filled with people. There wasn't an empty table in the house; sailors lined the bar against the far wall, and their laughter rose and fell in an even, almost soothing cadence, a counterpoint to the lively flute a local minstrel played by the fireplace. It was, all things considered, a pleasant background.

Our conversation was pleasant as well, if a bit tense. By unspoken agreement, Terra and I avoided the doctor's orders altogether; and in our fumbling for a topic, I stumbled by happy chance onto the others with whom we had fought Kefka. Terra seemed almost eager to speak about them, and after our arguments earlier in the day, I was happy simply to hear something--anything--about the past.

The fact that Terra was a superb storyteller did not hurt at all. She spoke in anecdotes, painting portraits as vivid as they were amusing. There was Edgar, a natural leader and an incurable flirt; Gau, the fearless prankster of the group; Sabin, the good-natured butt of most of Gau's jokes; Cyan, a man with a sense of nobility exaggerated almost to the point of parody.

Locke, I learned, had taken it upon himself to keep everyone humble; he wielded a rapier wit surpassed only by Relm, whom Terra had mentioned at lunch. Locke, however, had a sense of timing and moderation that Relm did not; she possessed (or was possessed of) a temper of which even Gau was wary. Both were almost constantly at loggerheads with Setzer, which did not surprise me at all.

It did make me think of something, though. "Will Relm be coming on the Falcon?"

"Probably." Terra finished her drink and signalled a passing waitress for another. "I doubt she'd let Interceptor out of her sight."

"I hope there isn't too much trouble between her and Setzer during the flight."

She smiled. "I doubt there'll be too much. Besides, with Celes there..."

"You have a point." I shook my head. "I don't know. I just have a bad feeling for some reason....It's probably nothing."

"Relax, Shadow." The waitress delivered Terra's drink, and she received it with a grateful nod. "You can't do anything about it, and worrying will only affect the things you can change."

"I guess so." I washed down the last of my fish, and sat back. "I think I'm going to take a walk around town tomorrow, maybe do a little shopping."

"Not a bad idea--you could use some fresh air. Do you want some company?"

"I wouldn't mind..." I trailed off as I saw a man dressed in the garb of a sailor approach our table. We turned to face him; as we did, I noticed that the bar had gone silent. "Can we help you?"

"P'rapsh...ye can, bud." He seemed a bit unsteady on his feet, but his eyes were disturbingly bright. "I wush...wondrin'f I'd been hearin' wrong...did yon lash...call ye 'Shadow'?"

I blinked, and glanced over at Terra. She had gone very still; her eyes narrowed, and her mouth was a flat line. "Yes, she did....is there a problem?"

He chuckled. "'sh there...a problem, he says." A chill ran down my spine at his tone. I looked over his shoulder and saw two more men step away from the bar and turn in our direction. "You could say that." And before either of us could say anything further, he drew a knife and lunged for my chest.

I froze. My eyes fixed on the glittering blade as it began its descent--and then sank into the tabletop, as Terra shoved the table into his midsection. "Get down!" I fell out of my chair as Terra floored the sailor with a vicious jab between the eyes, then tipped the table over in front of me, nearly clipping my ankles.

As I scrambled to my hands and knees, I heard a loud crash, and the bartender yelling, "Not in here! Take it outside!" I peered over the table, and saw one of the other men lying on--or rather, in--the bartop while Terra ducked a wild roundhouse punch from the third. She stepped to the side and delivered a crunching uppercut, and as she did so, my gaze was drawn to the scabbard that hung at her side. A sword? She has a sword?! It took only a few seconds to realize that she had no intention of shedding blood, if she could avoid it.

The sailor, though, clearly had no such compunctions. He regained his feet and drew another knife from his boot. "Terra! Behind you!" Terra and the sailor both spun around; unfortunately, I was about five feet closer to him than Terra was, and he seemed to realize that about the same time I did. I ducked down behind the table and braced myself against it--a very bad idea; he kicked me through the tabletop, catching me behind the ear and sending me sprawling.

He stepped around the table, hefting his knife with one hand as he loomed over me. "Now you die," he snarled as he drew back to throw--

And screamed as Terra suddenly appeared behind him, sword drawn and sweeping across the backs of his knees. The blade came back streaked with red; he pitched forward, and I heard Terra curse as he extended the blade, aiming for my chest--

And then, almost of its own accord, my hand shot out, grasping his hand by the wrist and twisting sharply, sending the knife skittering across the floor. Undaunted, the sailor landed on my chest and reached for my throat; but before he could get there, Terra hauled him off of me. He continued to struggle, ignoring the streams of blood pouring down the backs of his legs.

"I'm gonna kill you!" The sailor seemed both more coherent and sober now, screaming at the top of his lungs. "You bastard! You hear me? I'm gonna kill you like you--"

Terra brought the pommel of her sword down on his skull, knocking him unconscious. I heard her say something about him needing a doctor, but I really wasn't paying attention at that point.

The sailor had recognized me--recognized the name "Shadow."

And he attacked me on sight. I stared at the hand that had disarmed him by sheer reflex.

I'm gonna kill you, like you--

Like I what? Like I killed?

Something didn't add up here.

I heard someone clear his throat behind me, and turned to see the innkeeper, face pale. "Yes?"

"I...er..." He swallowed. "Is it true what he said? You're...Shadow?"

"Yes, but I don't know who he is--I'm sorry about the fight, I--"

"No, no, no!" He waved his hands frantically. "It's not your fault, don't worry about it. I was wondering, though, if you'd mind retiring to your room for the night...please?"

I looked at him suspiciously. "Are you sure? You know what's been happening at night of late..." I trailed off as he emitted a startled squeak.

"D-don't worry about that, sir." His face was now white as a sheet. "We will not t-trouble you about it again, and p-please accept my apologies for the inconvenience."

I felt a ball of ice form in my stomach. "All...all right, then." Terra had some explaining to do. "If you insist, I guess we'd best go, eh...huh?"

Footsteps pounded by the stairwell. I turned just in time to catch a flash of green hair disappearing upstairs.

"Terra?"